Ray,
I think you are right. That’s what I am implementing right now. Hired my first guy paying him $10 for storefront, resi, any pole work. However, he can do chair work so any chair work I pay him $13. I am training this guy with the intentions of him being a supervisor. He has asked about if he can get us work and I told him ya that would be fine at that point I would pay him a percentage of jobs if we book them. When I hired him he was wanting more money, I basically told him that this is an entry level job he didn’t have any window cleaning experience so we start at 10. I think its important to think about the future. There has to be a starting point and then be able to work towards something if you are capped off already from the get go on a commision bases their is no real room for growth unless you change pay structure. Just my opinion…
has anyone ever tried putting the supervisor on salary and the helper on commission? seems like this way the helper won’t slack because he wants to get as much done as possible, and the super won’t let the quality slip because he’s not cutting corners trying to rush through jobs
i do 30% of $60 an hr. have my formula of 24 sides of glass per hr. most guys make over $20 an hr. if there good
but if i bid more on a job the formula stays the same on the labor. and when ajob is done w/ 3 days of no complaints from the contact i give another 5% to the guys for T.C.B.
[B][B][/B]has anyone ever tried putting the supervisor on salary and the helper on commission? seems like this way the helper won’t slack because he wants to get as much done as possible, and the super won’t let the quality slip because he’s not cutting corners trying to rush through jobs [B][/B][/B]
This could stir up some friction between the two. It may work but you have to run the numbers at the end of each day or pay period. Take the gross of that week and what you paid them. You will come up with a percentage for labor. I can keep my single guys at 30% and my two men crews at 40% maximum guaranteed with commission. The #1 cost that most business owners try to limit is labor. If its out of whack, your gonna lose big bucks. Been there before- never again.
Steve
I’ve had the same employee for 3 years, his is making 42% commission, he does almost all of my commercial route work, when he helps me with large commercial and residential he gets $20/hr. Take the high wages with a grain of salt because he is family, but I still would give a good employee 35% commission if he was reliable.
My first part-timer was hourly, I said I would raise him to commission when his quality of work improved and he sped up. He never improved past the first month of teaching him and after a year he was still only at $11/hr after starting at $10. I let him go because I had to consistently tell him over and over to do the most mundane things and he would eventually slack off. I don’t know if giving him commission would help or not, but I didn’t want to reward him with a pay raise for sucking, and I worried if I gave him a low commission if he could even keep up enough to earn minimum wage.
Unfortunately, every person you hire is an individual with their own bad habits. I still lean towards paying commission as a reward for hard work after a certain amount of time, but this post gives me some food for thought.
Shiny,
I have had people that lacked the drive or werent detail oriented. Ive paid them commission and they still dont make that much money because they tend to have poor time management skills and lack the drive. I believe that if you are going to pay a commission scale, It shouldnt be a piece of cake to pull in 800.00 to 1,000.00 a week cleaning windows. They have to put a good deal of effort to get paid that well.
Steve
Is it 30% if they drive their own vehicle too? Do you pay for gas? Company vehicle?
i agree, so go through 100 men and keep 10.
I pay my guys when they work as crews (2) 20% each. When they work by themselves, they earn 30%. I provide everything-vehicles, tools, insurance etc. They just have to show up in uniform ready to work .
Steve
Steve,
when you pay a crew of 2 the 20% each how do you find your profit. what determines if the work by themselves?
Dave
Hey Chris,
Your form for quoting commission % is pretty good. I don’t know exactly what the exact cost of administrative expenses that have grown very high. Is it actually going through the % list to figure out to pay each employee? Is it retrieving the information from all the crews and re-entering it? Probably part of the high admin. is cause you do have a rather large business. 
I have an idea, that may help or… not. When a company does an hourly payroll, all the guys probably write in their hours for the day or week. How about doing something similar to that with commission pay, only they write down the amount of the checks in for that day in an excel system that computes their % pay or a form that the admin can quickly punch them in. In the excel system You can set a commision pay rate for each employee or category employee. It doesn’t take much thinking after this is set up. All you have to do is enter in the amount done that day for each employee. We do this and it is fairly quick and I don’t have to worry about someone looking at the wrong percentage on the list.
Other notes that saves us time with percentage pay.
We try and keep the same crew members together for a week or two so we can look at the whole week of work as opposed to daily.
If at all possible we don’t have an additional crew member or another crew join a current crews job half way through which can through a wrench in the % system.
I haven’t read anything on here about how overtime pay factors into your pay rates. For me when I have guys on board that is a key element to determining how to pay them. How does overtime factor into how you pay your guys?
Whatapane,
There’s another thread on this form that addresses that…can’t remember which one it is.
We try to prevent any overtime by aiming for the guys to work less than 40hrs a week. I just bring more people on if its going to look like overtime. I know that may not be helpful if someone is looking to get a ton of hours.
That thread is a bit different. My question has to do with how factoring in overtime directly influences how you pay your guys. For instance if you want your payroll to stay under 30% of your gross then you can’t pay out 30 % commision to your guys because then if they get overtime your payroll will exceed 30%. So do you guys factor in overtime in determining how to pay your guys and how do you discourage ovetime hours?
We pay our employees $14.00 an hour.
Bump on an old post, but I’m looking into hiring my first regular helper and likely either giving him the route work I have now as his primary responsibility or splitting it and bringing him in to help on other resi jobs. When you hired your first few guys did you ever consider hiring from your local “unskilled labor” office and training a guy, recruiting a young college kid, or just ask your friends if they knew someone looking for work? I’m trying to approach this with as little time as possible needed to train someone coupled with that person not needing to feed a family on what I’ll be able to pay him starting out. And being ok with the slow season that is approaching.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Window Cleaning Resource mobile app
I’ve always payed a commission that averages an employee $12-$15/hour.
First guy was a family member wanting some side work, he carried his own insurance and billed me by percentage of jobs… No sweat at first. Problem with sub contractors is the control factor. You get little or none. It took me a couple years of over paying before I realized a restructuring was necessary, and hired on. Currently just a couple guys, but with work comp and unemployment insurance they feel better treated (which they are) and when work slows one guy doesn’t mind taking a few months off with unemployment.
I have had success and not so good success with friends or people I know . But I’m now needing to replace one of my guys who is moving so I’ll have to look and see who’s out there the old fashioned way this time 
Sent from my iPhone using Window Cleaning Resource
I’m in a similar boat as you, Jeremiah. Currently I have 4 part-time (anywhere from 1-4 days a week) techs. They all can collect even if I give them a little work in the winter, but PA seems to make it exceptionally difficult and bothersome to do so. They pretty much all gave up which is a shame, since we pay in to the fund and it’s there for the taking. I had a full-timer a few years back, but even with his success in collecting and working a little it didn’t cut it.
I have toyed with doing a steady weekly salary, but never came up with something that seemed to be the answer.
Has anyone ever worked something out with a team member to bank their overtime during the busy season and pay it out to them during the slow season? Not sure on the legalities of that but I’m just curious.
Sent from my SM-G920T using Window Cleaning Resource mobile app
